I miss my family, but I am fortunate enough today to be travelling in the company of friends. They’re an interesting group – some of them are funny, others would prefer to break things instead figuring them out and one of them is a little old, crotchety and hard to read. Even though they’ve only been my friends for a short while, they are all I have and I would do anything for any of them.

I’ve always been blessed with good friends but I could never truly trust any of them as much as I trust those that I travel with now. Why? Well, there’s an overly simple answer: I know magic. Not many others know magic and fewer still use it, I’d imagine. I can’t imagine not using magic…it fills me with clarity, purpose and ability.

As kids, we were taught that there was no such thing as magic, that what we thought was magic was actually demon possession. As such, no one wanted to so much as to talk about magic for fear that they would open themselves up to possession. However dumb and thick-skulled this may be, I don’t hold those handed-down superstitions against the people that harbor them (although it’s irritating that they propagate such superstitions). It’s what they are taught and in their simple lives, they don’t need magic.

However, superstitions can hurt.

I grew up in a tiny village about 2 days ride from Wylvan called Bufree. We lovingly called the town BFE for short. Most of the 29 families that lived in BFE were hunter/gatherers or farmers. All of the families were fairly large – I’d say that most families had at least 5 children. My family had exactly 5 kids – three brothers and two sisters.

The people of BFE were a tight-knit and tough people. We even made it through most winters without a single death. Of course, on the coldest days, we’d all go to the local temple, which allowed us to keep track of everyone and let us concentrate our heating supplies in one place.

There wasn’t much around BFE. We had plenty of small game, some smaller streams and ponds from which we’d fish. The ground wasn’t ideal for farming because it was very rocky underneath all the grass but we managed to grow what was needed.

Since there wasn’t much to do around BFE, us kids really had to wander far to find anything neat. My brother Tobias, whom I always called Toby, was fearless and I was always curious so we’d often run off too far in the hopes of finding something new or unusual and wouldn’t get back until after dinner time. Mother never had an issue with us getting back late, but there were more than a few times that Toby and I got some spankings and extra chores from Father because of it.

One day when Toby and I were out exploring we literally stumbled across the head of a statue. By literally, I mean that Toby tripped over what he thought was a rock. It was just pure happenstance that we even decided to look at the rock any closer. Luckily, we did and what we found changed my life forever. That rock was actually the head of a statue. Can you imagine how excited we were?! We were on the verge of an epic discovery! We spent months going back to that statue hauling shovels, water and anything else we imagined that we’d need.

A couple months after we started, we had completely dug out the statue. It was a statue of a man. The man appeared to be old, but we could’ve thought that just because he had a big beard. But for all the work we put into uncovering that statue, it was just a statue. A boring, worthless statue. I remember when I first felt disappointed at the statue. I wanted so badly to be part of some big news in the village. If Toby and I could’ve found some treasure, the Ahrenson sisters would have been ours for sure. Ahhhh – the Ahrenson sisters. I had the biggest crush on Lissa Ahrenson even before I was old enough to know what a crush was.

So there I was staring at the statue, feeling disappointed. The statue was at the base of one of the many rolling hills we have in the area and as I was staring at the statue and hill, it occurred to me that the hill vaguely resembled a home. The hill had a few odd spots that at first I thought were just erosions, but I imagined how those eroded spots could actually be walls that hadn’t been completely covered by dirt and vegetation. I took my shovel over to one of the spots that looked more and more like a wall and swung.

You should have seen the look on Toby’s face when he heard my shovel ring out from hitting stone – stone that formed a wall. In fact, there was an entire house there. That very moment is still one of the highlights of my young life. I felt like Toby and I – two young kids – actually accomplished something.

Toby and I were smart though. We didn’t tell anyone, not our other friends and not even our older brother, who was too busy acting like an adult to be fun anyway. We went to the house for quite a long time digging and digging before we finally were able to get into the house. The inside of the house smelled terribly and it was full of old spider webs that I made Toby clean out. There was also a skeleton in there. Apparently, the owner hung himself because the skull still hung from a tattered rope above where the rest of the skeleton lay.

Toby and I searched around the place, but the only thing we found that wasn’t lost to time was a dirty old book. Toby didn’t care about the book – he more interested in jewels and swords. Lucky for me. Once I wiped the dirt and grime off the book, I found that it was still in very nice shape. The book was pretty thick, but when I opened it up, I found that only 12 pages had any type of writing at all. I didn’t recognize any of the writing, but I figured that this was the old man’s diary. I was immediately hooked to this book – after all, it was probably the final words of a madman that hung himself. Some small, sick part of me was so incredibly intrigued at the thought of reading the last ramblings of a madman from an age long since gone.

I spent a long while going through those 12 pages. I took so many notes and at times thought I had the odd writings figured out, but always, I’d find a word that just didn’t make sense when I translated it. After a while, I figured out that there was one word that kept tripping me up and it was always the last word on the page. I didn’t realize that it was the same word for a while because even though it was written identically each time, it was used in different tenses. I’m still not sure what the word means, so I took to pronouncing as it looked, ‘Assid’. I knew nothing of magic other than the scary stories we were told as kids, but after a while I had a real feeling that this was actually a spell book.

I tried for so long to cast a spell from the book. I followed the instructions perfectly, but nothing ever happened. At the time, I thought that maybe that’s why the old man hung himself – he got so annoyed that his spells wouldn’t work that he hung himself. Since every page ended with the word Assid, it eventually became a curse word that I used fairly often, because it came to represent my frustration with that book.

After a couple more years, everyone knew of the old buried house and more than a few kids went there to steal kisses from each other. I kissed Lissa there for the first time. That was the first of many kisses that we would steal from each other over the months during our 16th year. Eventually, our parents arranged for us to get married. We were to be wed once both of us turned 17 and we couldn’t have been happier.

At the time that Lissa’s parents told her that she would be wed to me, her mother gave her a fine necklace that had been in their family for years. Lissa excitedly put the necklace around her neck as symbol that she was to be wed to me. I thought the necklace was terribly ugly, but I’d never tell Lissa that. She was so proud of that ugly necklace.

Since we were finally engaged, we wanted to go to the spot where we first kissed – out to the old buried house. On the way to the house, she was being playful and pulled at a low-hanging branch so that it would snap back and hit me. She was always playful like that – it was one of the things I loved most about her. It worked – she totally caught me off guard with that branch. I pretended that it tripped me up, then bounced up and pointed at the branch as if to curse it and yelled, “Assid!”

A green ball of acid formed at my fingertips and unerringly shot out and hit the branch! It finally happened! Somehow, I finally cast one of the spells from the book. I was so excited and turned to Lissa just as proud of myself as I could be. But when I looked into Lissa’s eyes, all I saw was fear quickly followed by tears. I reached for her, trying to console her, but she ran off for town crying “Please, God, not my Tudor!”

The fear I saw in her eyes hurt me deeply. It made me feel like a monster. But if I was a monster, I was not going to be a stupid monster. I knew what happened to ‘possessed’ people and knew that if Lissa truly believed I was possessed she would tell her family and word would get out to everyone. I knew I had to leave. It was the only way to protect my family from the shame of having a ‘possessed’ son. To this day, I still don’t know if Lissa told anyone what I did or if she just told everyone that I was killed by some fantastical monster. I still miss her and love her and I’m still shocked by her reaction. I don’t hold it against her even though I would have thought that our love could overcome anything.

I went back to my home as fast as I could. I went straight to my Mother because I knew she’d never fear me or leave me. I had the hardest time telling her, but it all came out eventually. I saw nothing of fear in her eyes. In fact, I saw nothing but love and…understanding? She agreed that I should leave the village, for my own safety. She quickly filled some bags with bread and fruit and told me to go to Wylvan. Once there, she told me to find a way to seek out my fortune and not to tell anyone about my powers. She also gave me an ugly piece of rock that she called Magitite. I recognized the rock immediately as being just like the one that Lissa was wearing around her neck. Mother told me that as long as I had Magitite with me, I could cast those spells that I had spent so long trying to figure out.

I’m impressed and confused by the fact that my Mother knows so much of magic and I can’t wait for the day when I can speak to her again.

For now, I have a new family. This crazy, motley group of fools is quite endearing and they don’t fear my magic. Spending time with them has been good for my emotional health, because they really replaced the entire social structure that I grew up with and there is much that I can learn from each of them.

My magic is growing. I’m getting better and better at it. Even more, I’m feeling more and more entuned with the elements except water. I most especially feel in tune with the elements of acid and fire. I used the book I found when I was younger to teach myself how to summon a creature of fire. With that knowledge, I was able to figure out how to summon a creature of acid as well. Figuring that out just seemed natural…after all, the elements both burned things and thereby purified them. When I was a kid, we’d clean rocks and metal with acids and clean out overly thickened underbrush with fire.

Still, I am always eager to learn more. There’s another spell in the old book that I almost have figured out. I have also just about figured out how to cast my own version of the book’s Orb of Acid. My version will be just a little stronger.

I feel committed to the Seekers now. They are my friends and my family. We each put our lives in each others’ hands and and we all survive.

Tudor’s Treatise on Summoning

I rely heavily on summoning creatures. Usually, I summon these creatures in the heat of battle knowing that they will likely killed. After some thought, I began to wonder about the morality of summoning creatures.

If my summons were created from the energies that surround me, then there would be no morality concerns because I wouldn’t be ripping the creature out of its current existence to serve me (be it for good or evil intentions). However, as I thought about the subject and reflected all the way back to my childhood, I became more and more certain that the creatures I summon are more like projections of actual creatures. I just use my magic to provide a physical presence to those projections for a period of time.

I’ve come to call these projections, “Identities”. Every creature has an Identity. Even places have an Identity, which is what I use for my teleportation spells.

I am able to see and remember these Identities which is how I am able to summon creatures. Each individual creature has a unique identity. For example, we had 3 guard dogs on our farm growing up. Deesul’s Identity was one of squirrel stench and the feeling of teeth ripping into rabbit flesh, Kracken’s Identity was one of stealthy movement and patience and Beast’s Identity was one of folded ears and the feel of rushing wind against whiskers. There is a commonality amongst the different species that I feel must account for the celestial, fiendish or lack of either trait displayed when I summon a creature. I will save discussions of this commonality for a later date. Instead, I will focus on the reason I am using the term “Identity” in this fashion. This discussion starts in my childhood.

I was just like other kids in Bufree – I enjoyed the town’s celebrations and would run with the other kids to greet caravans as they came to town. But for all the great times I had doing such childish things, I never felt that I was in the right place. When I was with my father out hunting, with other kids out exploring or even doing chores on the farm, I knew that I was exactly where I should be and it was incredibly fulfilling.

At times, I felt a nearly supernatural connection with the world around me. The more familiar I became with the world around me, the stronger my connection to it.

At some point, I could even recognize a place with my eyes close, just by recognizing the Identity of the place. The Ahrenson’s backyard had an Identity that was a combination of the smell of rhubarb tarts and a feeling of pulling up a weed’s roots. Every other place had its own Identity: the town square felt like the smile people get when they hear a baby laughing and the joy associated with throwing rice during celebrations while our garden felt like sharing and quenched thirst. Whenever I found myself in a new place, its dormant Identity seemed to wake for me as if crying out for attention. This is the reason that I wouldn’t give up digging at the ruins in which I found my first spell book.
Of course, I would never tell anyone about any of this. It was my secret. I was afraid that if I told anyone, they’d believe me to be possessed, which was the explanation for anything that we couldn’t explain.

As I got older, I began to similarly sense the Identities of animals. Their Identities were much more complex and I always thought that any animal whose Identity I could sense could similarly sense me. I really explored this ability of mine with our farm dogs. These dogs were not pets – they lived on the farm and were trained to guard the farm from people and animals. They were vicious.

I studied those dogs for a good long while and became quite comfortable with them. The more I studied them, the more I was able to sense their unique Identities. Their Identities were all unique but also all had the commonality of loyalty and protection.

As time went by and I gained a better understanding of my magic, I found that I could concentrate so completely on those dogs’ unique Identities, that I was able summon their Identities in physical form. My conjurations were so brief, that I had a hard time studying them, but eventually I could sense that the Identities of the dogs I conjured was slightly different than those of our actual farm dogs. I believe that this little difference is due to common traits that members of each species share with each other.

At this point in time, I had already left Bufree, so I couldn’t go home and check on the dogs after I had conjured one. So I had to learn how to conjure something else. I started with an owl. I studied an owl for a few days and then summoned it. The owl I summoned had an almost exact Identity to the one I studied, which was one that felt like night turning into day. The only difference is that the owl I summoned made the night feel like day and felt like the warmth of a ray of sunshine. I am certain that the feeling of warmth from a ray of sunshine is the celestial trait that is part of all owls’ Identity.

One day, I summoned the owl so that I could see if it it could fly up and look around the area and then report its findings to me. As it flew up into the air, it got attacked by two ravens. The ravens really hurt the owl and I freaked out, worried that the real owl had been injured. The original owl was totally fine. Feelings of tiredness and loyalty had crept into the owl’s Identity, but otherwise, it didn’t notice anything. I’ve come to find that even if a creature I conjure is destroyed, the original creature is not harmed.

That’s how my conjurations work. I am able to conjure forth their Identities into physical form. That feeling of embracing a ray of sunshine is present in many of the creatures I summon, but not all of them. Some creatures, such as elementals, only feel like their elements with a severe sense of detachment. There is no feeling of loyalty towards me. Others have a sense of hatred and I will not summon any being of hatred ever again.

As I grow in power, I am sure that my magic is becoming more and more intertwined with the Identities I conjure. I am currently studying how to fuse the cleansing powers of acid into the Identities I conjure. Doing this will unfortunately eliminate the celestial traits that accompany so many of my conjurations but it will also eliminate all fiendish traits. I just need to be careful not to change the unique Identities…when I summon Beast, I want to always feel the rush of wind through his whiskers and the feeling of laid-back ears.

In the end, I am confident that I am not harming any creatures when I conjure their Identities, however, I do think there’s is a limited number of times that I can conjure any given Identity each day.